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News Archive: June 2008

The Mighty Celt DVD: Finally available in the USA!Posted at 6:42 AM (PDT) on Friday, June 27, 2008

Cinequest Distribution is releasing The Mighty Celt which was filmed in Ireland and released in 2005. The DVD will be available on July 15, ten days before the July 25 opening of The X-Files: I Want to Believe.

For her role in this film, Gillian won the People's Choice Award at the Irish Film and Television Awards in 2005.

The director of The Mighty Celt, Pearse Elliott, said: "I'm absolutely delighted to hear Gillian Anderson has won the People's Choice Award for Pantene Best International Actress at this year's IFTAs. It was a pleasure working with Gillian and the award is thoroughly deserved.” (Regional Film & Video, 08.11.05)

Reviews:

"The story is so slender it almost crumbles between your fingers. The romance between Anderson’s single mum and Carlyle’s newly freed prisoner is made of sterner stuff, if only because they wear their unspoken grief like Marley’s chains. The winning ingredient is how these lonely adults square their differences for the sake of the young boy.

Who would have thought that the wellbeing of a dog would inspire the first example of Peace Process cinema? All credit to the exotic cast for trampling the issues that famous locals fear to tread. The accents are impeccable. Anderson is faultless as a bitter, loving mother. Carlyle is terrific as the wise lag, hailed as a hero for an act of terror he would rather forget." -- James Christopher, The Times Online

"The film essentially belongs to its actors and characterisations, with fine performances from Tyrone McKenna as Donal, Ken Stott as Joe and Robert Carlyle as O. But the shining light is Gillian Anderson, virtually unrecognisable as Belfast single mum Kate, all boobs, roll-up fags and high hair. Her short-vowelled, nasal accent is nothing short of the real thing.

Entirely shot on location, The Mighty Celt is a semi-autobiographical homage to Elliott's home town, drawing on his passion for breeding dogs and injected with his own take on post-conflict politics. It's a moving story of atonement, told through sensitive characterisation, and using paradox to underline Elliott's particular political bug-bears." -- Rebecca Kemp, Film Ireland

Gillian Anderson will take on one of the most controversial roles an actress can play on the stage.

She will star as Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House, which opens at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre in Covent Garden next spring.

A new version of the drama has been written by Zinnie Harris and will be directed by Kfir Yefet. More than a century after Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll's House, where Nora famously, walks out on her husband and children, that defiant act still has the capacity to shock.

'How does a woman... how can a woman... abandon her children like that?' Gillian wondered, when we discussed A Doll's House on Wednesday in London.

The actress, who has two children and is pregnant with her third, added: 'To some of us, it just feels absolutely shocking. I couldn't imagine it, and yet it happens all the time for one reason or another.'

And in between preparing for A Doll's House and her new baby, Gillian is waiting for the release, in August, of X Files: I Want To Believe, a big-screen movie in which, after a break of several years, she reprises her role as agent Dana Scully. 'They've all matured, which is such a funny word to use because of course we've matured - we're ten years older in X Files, and look it,' she said.

The part of Scully made her a star, but she has more than proved her acting abilities in other work, particularly the film House Of Mirth and her spectacular performance as Lady Dedlock in the award-winning BBC TV serial of Bleak House.

But she likes to return to the stage even though, she says, it terrifies her. 'Every time I put up my hand (to go on stage again), it's the other arm trying to pull my hand down,' she said, laughing. 'It's like: "What do you think you're doing?" But it's so rewarding when I do theatre.'

Certainly not in monetary terms, and not at the Donmar, where she'll be on the Equity union minimum of around £400-£500 a week. 'I still choose to get involved in theatre. It's important enough to me in my life, that I think I'd choose it regardless of whether I could feed my children,' she joked.

Gillian: It’s a real thriller, a real scary movie. It has a strong supernatural element, which I like, and we’re combining that with a horror element. It’s the kind of film that’s going to scare the audience, make them jump out of their seats, which I think is what the best episodes of The X-Files did to the audience. The film goes back to the roots of the television series, which is to have a strong supernatural-horror feeling, really scary.

Why do you think people love these characters so much?

Gillian: I think the relationship between Mulder and Scully is a classic, archetypal relationship between two strong-willed people who start out with a very different view of the world and evolve over time, along with a romantic undercurrent to the relationship that was handled in a very interesting way. It was a magical feeling for me to be back working with David again on these characters and I hope the audience feels the same thing when they see the film.

Books That Made a Difference to Gillian Anderson-As told to Mamie Healey

More, more, just give her more books! The X-Files star finds beauty, influence, wisdom, and inspiration in three hard-to-shake contemporary novels, a high-climbing history, and the ever-compassionate Pema Chödrön.

I remember when a friend gave me a novel - I had huge respect for this person's taste-and he said to me, "I am so jealous that you have this in front of you." I knew exactly what he meant. I'd had that feeling myself when I recommended a book to friends. On the first read, your skin is tingling and you're completely overwhelmed by the beauty of the story or its poetry. It's very difficult to return to that place when you go back to a book for a second read, because you're obviously influenced by an inner knowledge of where it's going to end.

If I hear about a good book, I will buy it automatically, so now I've got many, many books in piles. It's strange - I sometimes have the desire not to finish an amazing book, and at the same time, I know that there are so many more to read. What a beautiful conundrum to have in life, you know?

This is a fictional narrative of a free slave in Virginia who becomes a landowner and slave owner himself. It's a peculiar situation but historically accurate. Jones recounts that some black owners would treat their slaves as they themselves had been treated. It's like child abuse in a family lineage, the way that's passed down from generation to generation. I found the novel an acutely sad reminder of a time when, in our own backyards, humans were property and lives were considered dispensable.

Macfarlane combines stories of his own experiences summiting mountains with a history of mountain climbing. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, man saw mountains as ugly: God's mistakes that got in the way of us going from point A to point B. As Macfarlane explains, it was relatively recently that we began to think of them as "majestic" or "sublime." I'm also fascinated by the way that mountains can possess people. On some level, I understand that-not the need to conquer but the hunger. And the risks that one is willing to take in order to have what one wants.

A brother and sister, children of a Holocaust survivor, live in the same building. He's essentially an agoraphobic who has internalized the grief and pain of his parents; his sister has escaped it, or she thinks she has. When she has to go to Europe, she asks her housekeeper to check in on her sibling. You see a relationship develop between the brother and this South American woman, who has witnessed the massacre of her family. At one point, she leaves him a paper bag full of lemons. On each one, she's written a word or two to help him through the day. The gift of these succulent-smelling fruits is a wonderful image of a hidden man being led out of his skin, through her beautiful gestures. I decided that I was going to option the book, adapt it, and direct it. That's still my goal.

This came into my life at the end of an important relationship. I was having a hard time letting go of the person, of the memories. Pema offers tools. One is the practice of tonglen: You put your mind toward the suffering that you find in the moment, and you expand your meditation to include all those around the world who might be suffering with the same thing. And you extend compassion to them. So it's not just about me. Somehow it gets you out of yourself, and that's been very helpful.

The story takes place in an undisclosed South American country at a ball thrown for a Japanese businessman. The hosts have hired the businessman's favorite opera singer to perform. But terrorists take the guests hostage, releasing all the women except the singer. Though the situation ends in violence, for several months, as the hostages and their captors listen to the singer rehearse each day, they relax in their appreciation of this woman's voice. The book is about the ways in which beauty and love can transcend disparities, prejudices, even hate.

FREE STUFF!Tucked inside every issue of the magazine this month is a double-sided A2 poster with official artwork from The X-Files: I Want To Believe. And, as a bonus for readers who buy their mags from ASDA, we're also giving away a free edition of 2000 AD, the galaxies greatest comic!

THE X-FILESThis August sees the return of Mulder and Scully to the big screen, and we were on set for filming in Vancouver. Although much of the plot is still a closely guarded secret, you can see new pictures and read interviews with the creators in our exclusive behind-the-scenes report.